Italian unification and Liberal Italy (1861-1922)

Italian unification and Liberal Italy (1861-1922)Main articles: Italian unification and Italy in World War IGaribaldi and Victor Emmanuel II.

The creation of the Kingdom of Italy was the result of efforts by Italian nationalists and monarchists loyal to the House of Savoy to establish a united kingdom encompassing the entire Italian Peninsula. In the context of the 1848 liberal revolutions that swept through Europe, an unsuccessful war was declared on Austria. Giuseppe Garibaldi led the Italian republican drive for unification in southern Italy,[34] while the northern Italian monarchy of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia whose government was led by Camillo Benso, conte di Cavour, had the ambition of establishing a united Italian state under its rule. The kingdom successfully challenged the Austrian Empire in the Second Italian War of Independence with the help of Napoleon III, liberating the Lombardy-Venetia. It established Turin as capital of the newly formed state. In 1865 the capital was moved to Florence.

In 1866, Victor Emmanuel II aligned the kingdom with Prussia during the Austro-Prussian War, waging the Third Italian War of Independence which allowed Italy to annex Venice. In 1870, as France during the disastrous Franco-Prussian War abandoned its positions in Rome, Italy rushed to fill the power gap by taking over the Papal State from French sovereignty.Italian infantrymen in 1916. More than 650,000 Italian soldiers lost their lives on the battlefields of World War I.

Italian unification finally was achieved, and shortly afterwards Italy's capital was moved from Florence to Rome. Whilst keeping the monarchy, the government became a parliamentary system,